"Frankly, I was a terrible lawyer," says the Lauderdale-by-the-Sea retiree. "I just couldn't stand all that legal gobbledegook."

So when the 76-year-old New Yorker moved to South Florida in 2002 ("I came down here to be a beach vegetable. You know, ocean, pool, golf") he turned his lifelong passion for Broadway musicals into a burgeoning cottage industry.

It started out as a simple condo presentation where Prentiss played CDs and the occasional YouTube video in between behind-the-scenery stories of his favorite performances. Now, it's evolved into "Jewish Broadway," a series airing on cable channel Jewish Life Television (JLTV).

The fourth one – titled "The 10 Greatest Jewish Entertainers of the Century (Me and Nine Others)" – will air Sunday at 1 p.m. It was filmed at the Adolph & Rose Levis Jewish Community Center in Boca Raton.

"For this one we've totally transformed everything we have done so far," says Prentiss. "A friend big in the entertainment business in L.A. said to me, 'Come out of the tuxedo and get yourself a piano player. Turn it into a show.' And I did."

Prentiss says that whether people call him Charles or Chuck depends on the time of day.

Part of his deep well of knowledge is drawn from being an entertainment lawyer during the day -- as Charles. His clients included Bette Midler, Robert Goulet, Victor Borge, Norm Crosby, Rodney Dangerfield, Richard Rodgers, Moss Hart, Kitty Carlisle Hart as well as Broadway producers Cy Feur and Ernest Martin ("Guys and Dolls," "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," and the film versions of "Cabaret" and "A Chorus Line"). He went on to run his own life insurance brokerage company from 1970 through 2001.

But the how-to-work-an-audience talent comes from the night -- as Chuck -- and "40 years watching my friends play in the small clubs and cabarets of Manhattan. And to think I can reach an audience with one TV show that they in all those years could never achieve. That's the reach of TV."

It was JLTV producer Joel Levitch who first saw Prentiss as a TV star, based on a mutual friend's recommendation.

"I was just overwhelmed with his base of knowledge," Levitch says from his offices in New York. "He has a steel trap mind about all the facts and about all the musicals going all the way back to Yiddish theater. You know he speaks Yiddish, right? I just thought he had tremendous potential, particularly in South Florida. He's a raconteur, a natural born one."

Even though the focus for JLTV has been Jewish, Prentiss says he's versatile enough to lecture on Broadway lore from the Irish, Italian or African-American perspective, or even MGM musicals.

His previous "Jewish Broadway" shows on JLTV – videotaped at Wynmoor Village in Coconut Creek, the Herb Skolnick Community Center in Pompano Beach, Cinema Paradiso in Fort Lauderdale and the public library in Tamarac – will be rebroadcast.

"The 10 Greatest Jewish Entertainers of the Century (Me and Nine Others)" will air 1 p.m. Sunday on JLTV, which is carried by Comcast on Ch. 239, on DirecTV on Ch. 336.